


Remember Me

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-23
Updated: 2008-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:45:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom remembers Peter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember Me

_And my memory will be a little_  
out of focus, it in  
a giant negative, black  
and white, still undeveloped. 

Agha Shahid Ali, ‘Postcard from Kashmir’

 

\--

 

I remember him. He lives in beauty; wherever I stumble upon beauty, he is there. I remember him whenever I read verse that lifts itself above the prosaic, and finds its way into realms that I yearn to chart. I long to discover beauty, to define brave new worlds, which hold no meaning for me without him. I remember him whenever my fingers explore the keys of a piano with a will of their own, insistent, tugging my heartstrings back to a clear sunny day in Venice and an apartment filled with music and warmth, and the wonderful, wonderful possibility of giving a key to a precious man who had entered my life as surely as a river enters the ocean. I remember the way he used to allow himself to be swept away by music, how nothing had mattered to him when he was in the process of composing a new piece. Nothing but me. 

I remember him when I’m out on the street and I see a tall man in a long brown coat walking ahead of me, his hair dark as the calmest, softest night, and I long to quicken my pace, to fall in step alongside him, to slip my arm through his and turn to him and look into achingly familiar sea-green eyes that will hold nothing but delight at finding me beside him. And I forget to breathe then as the possibility becomes more real than the nightmare I am living in, the eternal darkness I have plunged myself into. I can think of nothing but finding him unexpectedly on an unfamiliar street and linking arms with him and steering him back to our haven, where I can explore him at leisure until I lose myself in him. The illusion takes hold of me and I run ahead and grasp the shoulder of the man in front of me, only to be glared at by a pair of hard black eyes, only to be shrugged off like a madman. The stranger strides away without once looking back, and I sink to the ground and howl as sharp pellets of rain begin to splatter the cobblestones and my upturned face and my streaming eyes.

I look for his eyes everywhere. I fight and fight to forget the last time I looked into those eyes. I buy old newspapers and magazines and cut out every pair of hazel eyes that I can find in them, and paste them carefully into a notebook. None compares to his, but I keep looking. I shred photographs of actors and celebrities and politicians that are carelessly inserted into newspaper articles, trying to collect noses and foreheads and lips that remind me of his. I try to piece together the face that I will never find anywhere now. Time rolls on. How can it bear to, when he no longer exists? My journey goes on, fueled by the memory of a man who refuses to stop inhabiting my mind and my heart and my dreams, who insists on living, who is in every thought I think, in every breath I take, who is the very air I breathe.

I do not have a single photograph of him. Images of him play like silent black and white movies in my mind as I thrash about in bed at night, the moonlight streaming in through my window, my waking nightmares bathing me in sweat. 

_Tom has nightmares. That’s not a good thing._

I throw off the damp covers and pad to the window, the bare soles of my feet cold against the floor. Outside the world is soaked in moonlight, colourless, reflecting the giant undeveloped negatives in my heart, the images that reflect the life we could have had.

I remember the way the sunshine snuggled into his hair when we sat at his terrace in Venice one morning and he sipped his tea, smiling at me over the rim of the cup. The sun loved him. Its rays danced on his face and made his long dark eyelashes cast tiny shadows on his skin which I traced with my fingers, loving every little bit of him. He was warm as the first sun of the morning, with its potential to wash away the shadows of the night and herald the promise of a fresh new day. A fresh new life, a brand new slate. His nature ran as deep as the river, with its rippling, dancing surface and its entrancing, unexplored depths.

I remember him whenever I arrive at a new place that he would have loved. I am branded forever with the mark of Cain, doomed to wander the earth until the end of my days in search of what I have left behind, annihilated. At every new destination, I write him a postcard. 

_Dear Peter, Lisbon is dazzling at this time of the year. I miss you. Love, Tom._

_Dearest Peter, Amsterdam would have been so much more beautiful if you had been here at my side. Yours, Tom._

_My darling Peter, Vienna seems completely empty and there is an ache in my heart where you should have been. Yours always, Tom._

He is in none of the places I visit, and yet he is everywhere around me. He is where I can’t hurt him anymore, where he is safe from my vicious, preying love. He will live in me until the day I breathe my last.

I remember him.


End file.
